


except you enthrall me

by thingswithwings



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Chromatic Character, Claiming, Cockrings, Facials, Homecoming, Multi, Multiple Partners, OT4, Prison, Tattoos, tattooing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-21
Updated: 2008-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:13:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets out of prison, and his team welcomes him home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	except you enthrall me

**Author's Note:**

> Title from John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV, "Batter My Heart, Three Person'd God." It's a super-kinky poem about God! I recommend it. This is just a super-kinky story about some people on Stargate Atlantis.

  
No one treated him badly.

There were no beatings, no torture. The guards barely looked at him, their eyes bored and empty as they delivered his meals, their voices dispassionate as they asked him for information.

Nobody touched him.

So he slept on the narrow prison cot that wasn't so different from his bed at home, and he ate the food (watery oatmeal stuff in the morning, soup in the evening), and he refused to divulge the location of Atlantis. To keep busy, he did a lot of pushups, just to maintain that bad-prison-movie atmosphere.

When Ronon's face appeared at the little window on the door to his cell, John didn't move, or speak: he sat silently on his cot, paralyzed, as the door shuddered beneath a blow from the other side. But he couldn't remain motionless for long, because the door was opening, yawning open, and this was it: his escape.

He stood up. The door swung open slowly, it seemed, a year at least between the moment that the lock broke and the moment that Ronon stepped into his cell, but really it was lightning-fast: Ronon's shoulder against the other side of it, breaking in; the door swinging inwards and crashing against the wall; Ronon in his cell, gripping his biceps in his large hands and looking at John's face. Ronon's fingers spanned along his arms, a warm pressure against the stiff material of his prison shirt.

"Sheppard?" Ronon asked. Ronon can ask a lot of things with just one word.

"I'm fine," John said. He wasn't sure when he last said anything, but his voice didn't crack. "Thanks, buddy. Let's get out of here."

-

Teyla and Rodney both touch him when they see him; Rodney with a hesitant pat on the shoulder that turns almost into a caress, as if he can't stop himself from wanting to touch more; Teyla with two fingers along his face, stroking over his cheekbone and jaw, as if she's just now remembering how he looks.

John doesn't think that they kill anybody on the way out. The guards are just there to do a job, and they put their weapons down with a shrug when Teyla demands it.

-

The first night he's back, they give him his space. He sleeps alone on his narrow bed; when he wakes, he doesn't remember his dreams. In the morning, he eats eggs and fruit that taste strange in his mouth, and he has a session with the new psychiatrist, and he briefs Carter on what happened. It doesn't take very long.

"Are you sure that's all?" Carter asks him. John knows she's been in a lot of alien prisons herself. He shrugs.

"I was mostly pretty bored," he says.

She stands, then, and so he stands, too, and shakes her hand when she offers it. Like everyone else on base, she touches him: her left hand on his shoulder while her right hand clasps his firmly.

"We're all glad to have you back, John," she says, smiling at him. She squeezes his shoulder for emphasis.

He smiles back at her for as long as he has to, then pulls gently out of her grasp.

-

The second night, Teyla shows up at his door.

"We did not know what you wanted." Her eyebrow arches, as if to say, what else is new, but her tone is serious and respectful.

"Where are Ronon and Rodney?" he asks, unable to stop himself from smiling a little.

She grins back at him, sudden and fierce. "They are, as Major Lorne would say," she rolls her eyes, "chickenshit."

"They're around the corner, aren't they?"

At that, Rodney emerges suddenly into the hallway, stumbling a little as if pushed from behind. He looks cranky, his eyebrows drawn together, turning to frown at Ronon, who's walking behind him. John wants suddenly to touch him, to draw their bodies together and bury his face in Rodney's neck. He doesn't move.

Nobody moves. Nobody says anything. Rodney starts to fidget.

Then Ronon says, "We missed you," his voice low and unsteady like John's never heard it before. Teyla nods her agreement, reaches out and cups his elbow, hesitantly, her fingertips first and then her palm coming into contact with his skin.

At that one touch, John feels alternate universes break and spin open: he draws back, and shakes his head, and closes the door; he reaches out, and takes Teyla's hand, and invites his team inside; he opens his mouth, he speaks, he says,

"I can't." His voice sounds harsh in his ears as the universe settles around him.

"You can't what?" Rodney asks, softly, so softly. John meets his eyes, then, and is shocked by the misery and loneliness that echoes off of him. His misery, and Ronon's, and Teyla's: _we missed you_.

John looks down at the floor: "I don't – " he says, and grasps for more words, but there aren't any more. So he stands back, holding the door open, and lets his team inside.

With the four of them crammed into his quarters and the door closed, it feels weird; they're all friends, but the sex only started a couple of months before John left for K7L-4V7; so very long ago.

But then Teyla's hand is on his elbow, again, leading him to the couch, and she's sitting next to him. As they sit, her hand travels slowly, firmly, up his arm to his shoulder, where it rests.

Ronon sits on the other side of him, and Rodney sits across from him on the bed with his hands clasped between his knees, his head lowered. There's a smudge of something peeking out from under Rodney's t-shirt, just beneath the stretched-out collar.

Without thinking, John reaches out to touch it, to wipe it away, and is shocked by the feeling of skin and cotton under his fingertips. Rodney looks up as John's hand grazes his collarbone, holds his gaze as John curls his fingers around the material of the t-shirt and pulls it aside.

There, deep black against Rodney's pale skin, curving over the bone, is a mark that John almost recognizes. He traces his fingers slowly over the lines.

"It's – " Ronon begins.

"I know what it is," John breathes. The mark is highly stylized, but recognizable: the gate symbol for Atlantis's point of origin.

Rodney nods, then looks uncomfortable. "Ronon did it."

John draws his hands back from Rodney's body. Next to him, Teyla pulls aside the high collar of her jacket and tilts her head to one side, looking up at him knowingly, wordlessly. John's fingers find her neck, the place below her chin where her skin is adorned with the same mark that Rodney bears. It's in the same spot as Ronon's Satedan Army tattoo, the place on the body that Ronon once told them meant _duty_.

"You all got them."

Ronon, sitting next to him, nods and holds out his right wrist; his tattoo covers the delicate flesh over his veins. John wants to touch it, too, wants to touch all of them: he spreads his fingers over Ronon's wide wrist, curling around the side of his hand. But Ronon shifts, pulls his hand down toward John's so that they're palm to palm, fingers interlaced and overlapping. John shuts his eyes.

"The symbol was Rodney's idea." Teyla's voice trembling in his ear, her breath on his neck. "Ronon designed them. It was a reminder of our grief, and a supplication for your safe return."

John opens his eyes again; Ronon's hand is still warm and broad against his, Teyla's palm still cupping his shoulder. John reaches out towards Rodney with his free hand, reaches out to complete the circuit. And Rodney makes a noise deep in his throat, a low pained groan as he slides off the bed and onto his knees, as he reaches out to grasp John's hand in his. But then he keeps moving forward, uses his grip on John's hand and wrist to pull him forward, too, and leans up to press his lips to John's, briefly, dryly, a ghost of a kiss that yields only the memory of touch.

They've never kissed before. John thinks: that was our first kiss.

He takes a deep breath and grips Ronon's hand harder, grips Rodney's hand harder, lets himself turn and shut his eyes and press his forehead to Teyla's temple, lets himself finally – finally - kiss her, his mouth wet and open and trembling against her cheek, her jaw. That seems to free the others to move – Ronon works his hands gently under John's shirt, spanning his ribs, and Rodney leans forward again, kissing him again, on the neck this time.

When John speaks, his voice cracks as if from disuse and his breath spills from his mouth to pool against Teyla's skin. "When do I get mine?"

"Now," Ronon says, his face against John's hair. "You get it now." John shivers.

Then they're all breathing together, bound together in the quiet. His skin is covered with them, slicked all over with them, Rodney's lips against his collarbone, Teyla's face against his, and hands, all of their hands on his body, encircling him, holding him in.

Teyla turns her face toward him and kisses him slowly, thoroughly, her tongue warm in his mouth. Then she pulls back, holding his face gently in her palms.

"I will go get the equipment," she says, and stands. John feels cold where she was just pressed against him.

As she slips from the room, Ronon bows his head, buries his nose against John's neck.

"So, what should we do while she's gone?" John asks. Rodney laughs against him, a choked, gasping sound that vibrates against his skin.

"Rock paper scissors?" Ronon suggests, mouthing John's earlobe and shoving one hand down the back of John's pants.

"I think Parcheesi," Rodney says, his voice thick.

-

When Teyla returns, she's carrying a black plastic case, along with a large brown leather satchel that John recognizes from before he went away. Teyla watches him carefully as she sets them down on the floor near the bed and opens them up.

"I made some new pieces, while you were away," Teyla says, holding his gaze. She begins to pull them out of the satchel: wide wrist cuffs, lined and riveted; a thick leather blindfold, intricately tooled; a small, delicate piece that looks like a cockring. John licks his lips.

"Not the blindfold," he says. Teyla nods and puts it back, picking up the other two.

Rodney and Ronon have him mostly undressed – his shirt on the floor, his pants loose around his hips – so it takes little effort for him to undress the rest of the way, to lie back on his bed with his arms above his head and wait. He wants to shiver: he feels his nakedness acutely, not as cold, but as exposure, as an invitation to their voracious eyes and hands.

It surprises him when Teyla starts taking off her clothes, too, draping them over a chair before coming over to kneel on the bed beside him. Out of the corner of his eye, John sees Rodney glance worriedly at Ronon, then start to unbutton his fly. He wants to open his mouth to tell them that they don't have to – it's a little weird, this quiet formal undressing, this nakedness – but when Ronon and Rodney pull their shirts over their heads almost in unison, John goes a little dry-mouthed.

Because he knows Rodney's broad freckled shoulders and Ronon's small flat nipples, the long scar that traces down Ronon's side and the way that Rodney's soft belly dips into his navel. He knows the curve of Ronon's arms and the mole on Rodney's neck. John knows all this.

He must make a noise, then, a gasp, because Teyla smiles at him from where she's kneeling next to him, and leans over him, her hard brown nipple grazing his face, the soft hair under her arm brushing against his forehead as she reaches up to enclose his wrists in the wide, solid cuffs. She buckles them up, then looks down at him.

He wriggles his wrists; it's not quite right. "Too loose," he says. There isn't enough pressure, and he wants the tightness: wants the soft wool pressed rough against his skin. Teyla nods and adjusts the straps, then attaches the cuffs to the wall behind the bed. John tries to twist his wrists again, and can't; tries to pull his arms back down his body, and can't; can't escape the sensation of the cuffs against his skin.

When Ronon comes to kneel on the other side of the bed, he's wearing nothing but plastic yellow glasses and latex gloves, his electric needle in one hand. John looks up at him and grins, helplessly: laughs, a rusty joy that wheezes from deep in his chest.

Ronon gives him a look, an arched eyebrow.

"I love you," John says. It wasn't what he meant to say, but when it comes out of his mouth, it feels right: Ronon, naked and ridiculous and beautiful in his protective eyewear, Ronon who John loves. He smiles at John, then leans down, needle still in one hand, and kisses him on the mouth, lush and luxurious, his beard tickling against John's lips.

When he pulls back, Ronon's smile is even wider. "Lie still," he says.

John does.

As Ronon wipes cold alcohol over his ribs, just below his pectoral muscle, Teyla grasps his cock in her hands, stroking firmly. John can't lift his head far enough to see, but he feels Rodney's broad-fingered hands on his knees, holding him down at the other end of the bed, anchoring him.

Teyla keeps working John's cock, slowly, then slips the cockring up and over it.

"I made this piece for you," she says, as she begins to buckle him into it. One strap behind his balls, one strap between balls and cock, and a third strap around his dick, holding the apparatus together. Her fingers are hard, her knuckles rough and dry as she restrains him. The soft leather holds him in place, holds him back, holds him together; he wants to reach for her, but his wrists tug against the restraints when he tries. Teyla gives him a smile, and bends to place an open-mouthed kiss on the underside of his cock, her mouth skittering over the leather and over his skin. Her hair falls over his thigh.

"You don't need to move, John," she says. "We have you."

"Ready?" Ronon asks. When John looks over, he sees that Ronon is poised, needle over his skin.

John nods at him, his breath catching in his throat.

The pain is less than he'd expected, when it comes: dull and racing along his nerves. It fades in and out, sharpening occasionally, as Ronon moves the needle along his skin. The needle makes a low buzzing sound that feels loud to him, loud as Teyla's hands caress his arms and the restraints that hold him down, loud as Ronon's gloved hands wipe away the excess ink, loud as Rodney's hands shift restlessly along his knees and thighs. He wants –

"Rodney," he says, and his voice sounds more like a croak, rough and wet.

He can feel the air thicken in the room as Rodney hesitates, then moves up the bed toward him, his face hovering over John's thigh.

"It's okay," Rodney says, talking fast, and there's worry in his blue eyes.

John arches his back a little as a rough trill of pain spiders out from the point of Ronon's needle. He feels his cock twitch and strain against the leather. Then the pain subsides again into a low roar across his torso, and he twists his neck to meet Rodney's gaze.

"Stay with me, buddy," he gasps.

Rodney looks at him for a long time – or it seems like a long time, as Ronon's hands work gracefully over his body, as Teyla holds him steady – then bends his head, not breaking eye contact, and presses a kiss to John's cock, the same kiss that Teyla gave him before, open-lipped and hot, sucking slightly against the cockring.

John's breath starts to come faster, now, his chest heaving as much as it can under Teyla's arms. They've never – him and Ronon and Rodney and Teyla, or him and Teyla and Rodney and Ronon, but never him and Rodney, not like this, at least. Rodney lifts his mouth, then brings it deliberately down again, moving up the shaft in a series of those slow, wet kisses, running his hands feather-light over the base, taking his time.

The buzz of the needle is still loud, so loud. "Keep holding still, John," comes Ronon's voice in his ear, low and steady, bracing him against the little shocks that ebb and flow through his body. The sensation is percussive, almost rhythmic as it builds up along his nerve endings, echoing the interrupted rhythm of Rodney's tongue pressing hesitantly against the side of his dick.

"We have you," Teyla says again, and presses her lips to John's neck as Rodney presses his to the head of John's cock, as Rodney slips his eyes closed and rubs the smooth side of his cheek along John's dick. The pleasure spirals through him just like the pain, parallel to the pain, like a double helix of sensation that rushes through him without respite or release. He wants to push into it, but Teyla's arms are holding him down; he wants to pull away from it, but Ronon's hands are stilling his escape.

When Rodney opens his mouth and takes in John's cock, it's nothing more than a confirmation: he's theirs.

He doesn't know how long he drifts in that space, his cock hard against Rodney's lips, Rodney's face; he doesn't know how long he lies still, so still, against the pain that shudders through him. It might be a long time. Ronon runs the needle against his skin, then subsides, wipes the ink, and runs the needle again: over and over, like Teyla's hands over his arm and chest.

Then Rodney breaks the silence, still running his cheeks and lips and tongue over and against John's dick, still fisting the shaft and cupping John's balls against the leather.

"What did they call you?" Rodney asks, sounding hoarse. "What did they call you there?"

For a moment, John floats in the pain and pleasure, not recognizing Rodney's question for what it is; then realisation rushes through him, and he has to breathe and breathe and breathe before he can speak.

"Forty-four," he says, and it's like cutting off a part of himself.

Rodney doesn't say anything, as if this is what he expected, but he keeps mouthing the head, keeps rubbing up against John's cock like he can't get enough of the feeling on his skin, like he wants John's scent all over him. Then he speaks again:

"John," Rodney groans, and closes his eyes, and kisses him and kisses him, rubs his lips all over him and tightens his fingers around John's dick, and suddenly it's more than John can take, because Teyla says it too, says,

"John,"

and Ronon draws the needle away from John's body and bends to kiss him, just above the new tattoo, and Ronon says,

"John," and the sudden cessation of pain rockets through John's body, and he starts to shake, safe in their hands and in Teyla's restraints. He keeps his eyes open as the pleasure draws up through his balls, straining against the cockring, as his come spills out onto Rodney's face, marking his lips and cheeks, dripping down his neck to his shoulder, covering him in John's smell. The sight of it, his come on Rodney's skin, starts another wave rolling through him, and he falls back, gives himself up to it as his orgasm draws on and on.

When it's finally over, he closes his eyes, breathing hard, letting himself melt into the bed. He feels their hands on him, so he knows it's all right – Teyla slipping off the cockring, Rodney cleaning off his dick with a wet cloth, Ronon spreading ointment gently over the mark he's left on John's ribs. When he feels Teyla's hands against the wrist cuffs, he opens his eyes again, looking up into her face.

"John," she says again, fondly, and draws away the restraints. His hands free, John sits up slowly, wincing as his muscles stretch. He reaches for her, then, puts his hand on her shoulder and waits.

She gets it a moment later, surprise written across her face, and bends down with her eyes closed to press her forehead against his. Her breath is warm as it plays across his lips.

He feels the slow caress of a hand against his chest, then, and pulls away from Teyla to look over at Rodney.

"Hey," John says, trying a half-smile.

"Hey," Rodney answers, and leans in to kiss him. It's not dry or fast, this time; this time, it's wet, drawn-out and deep, Rodney's tongue hot and slow in John's mouth, Rodney's lips curving in against his own. He tastes salty and bitter, John's come still lingering on his mouth, drops of it on his tongue and at the corner of his lips. John groans and cups the back of Rodney's head, twisting his fingers in his hair, deepening the kiss to taste himself on Rodney.

As he does, he feels Ronon shift to sit behind him, settling his chest against John's back and wrapping his arms around John's shoulders. John slowly breaks the kiss with Rodney and leans back, sighing, against Ronon's solid weight. Beside him, Teyla gets a hip on the edge of the bed and sits down, too, picking up John's hand and interlacing their fingers easily, rubbing his shoulder with her other hand. Rodney is still kneeling between John's spread legs, his hands balanced lightly on John's thighs, just caressing absently, like he can't get enough of this touch. Rodney's tattoo, like John's, glints black in the soft light.

Ronon presses a kiss to his jaw. "Welcome home," he says, and John is.


End file.
